That is to say in plain language, they would, under pretense of keeping every day as a Sabbath, not only work on the seventh day of the week, but on all the days of the week. But this plainly proves that Tertullian did not think the seventh day was superseded by the first. And thus he proceeds:—
“And through this arises the question for us, what Sabbath God willed us to keep.”
Our first-day friends quote Tertullian in behalf of what they call the Christian Sabbath. Had he believed in such an institution he would certainly have named it in answer to this question. But mark his answer:—
“For the Scriptures point to a Sabbath eternal and a Sabbath temporal. For Isaiah the prophet says, ‘Your Sabbaths my soul hateth.’ And in another place he says, ‘My Sabbaths ye have profaned.’ Whence we discern that the temporal Sabbath is human, and the eternal Sabbath is accounted divine.”
This temporal Sabbath is the seventh day; this eternal Sabbath is the keeping of all days alike, as Tertullian affirms that he and those with him did.
He next declares that Isaiah’s prediction respecting the Sabbath in the new earth (Isa. 66: 22, 23), was “fulfilled in the times of Christ, when all flesh—that is, every nation—came to adore in Jerusalem God the Father.” And he adds: “Thus, therefore, before this temporal Sabbath [the seventh day], there was withal an eternal Sabbath foreshown and foretold,” i. e., the keeping of all days alike. And this he fortifies by the assertion that the holy men before Moses did not observe the seventh day. And in proof that the Sabbath was one day to cease, he cites the compassing of Jericho for seven days, one of which must have been the Sabbath. And to this he adds the case of the Maccabees who fought certain battles on the Sabbath. In due time we shall see how admirably he answers such objections as these of his own raising.
In chapter vi., he repeats his theory of the “Sabbath temporal” [the seventh day], and the “Sabbath eternal” or the “Spiritual Sabbath,” which is “to observe a Sabbath from all ‘servile works’ always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time.” He says that the ancient law has ceased, and that “the new law” and the “Spiritual Sabbath” have come.
In the twentieth chapter of his first book against Marcion, Tertullian cites Hosea 2:11, and Isa. 1:13, 14, to prove that the Sabbath is now abrogated. And in his fifth book against Marcion, chapter iv., he quotes Gal. 4:10; John 19:31; Isa. 1:13, 14; Amos 5:21, and Hosea 2:11, to prove that “the Creator abolished his own laws,” and that he “destroyed the institutions which he set up himself.” These quotations are apparently designed to prove that the Sabbath is abolished, but he does not enter into argument from them. But in the nineteenth chapter of this book he quotes Col. 2:16, 17, and simply says of the law: “The apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance—that is, from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ.” This remark is truthful and would justly exclude the moral law from this abolition.
But in chapter xxi. of his second book against Marcion, he answers the very objection against the Sabbath which himself has elsewhere urged, as we have noticed, drawn from the case of Jericho. He says to Marcion:—
“You do not, however, consider the law of the Sabbath: they are human works, not divine, which it prohibits. For it says, ‘Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.’ What work? Of course your own. The conclusion is, that from the Sabbath day he removes those works which he had before enjoined for the six days, that is, your own works; in other words, human works of daily life. Now, the carrying around of the ark is evidently not an ordinary daily duty, nor yet a human one; but a rare and a sacred work, and, as being then ordered by the direct precept of God, a divine one.... Thus, in the present instance, there is a clear distinction respecting the Sabbath’s prohibition of human labors, not divine ones. Accordingly, the man who went and gathered sticks on the Sabbath day was punished with death. For it was his own work which he did; and this the law forbade. They, however, who on the Sabbath carried the ark round Jericho, did it with impunity. For it was not their own work, but God’s, which they executed, and that, too, from his express commandment.”